"The intention is we want to transition services at 1 January [with] as minimal disruption as possible both to the clients, the staff within the division and the GPs," he said.

"So we don't want to try and interfere with any referral pathways, we want to keep the same faces that the clients would be seeing and we want to just keep the continuation of services and in fact try to enhance the services, so we actually get a greater span of services.

"Psychiatry at the moment is a difficult one but certainly psychologists, mental health nurses and from the psycho-social point of view, social workers to look at disengagement with family or trying to reconnect people with family again, anything that would put a support structure around the individuals who might be seeking mental health services."